This invention relates to an input-output method and device for an operating system and more particularly to a method and device whereby a user can easily and efficiently select and modify operating conditions of a combinational weighing system.
Combinational weighing systems weigh articles by a plurality of weighing devices, perform arithmetic operations for combinations of measured weight values and then select a combination according to a predefined criterion. The major features of combinational weighing are great accuracy and high throughput. Automatic weighing systems of a combinational weighing type developed and manufactured by the present assignee, for example, have been commercially available for many years. A typical combinational weighing system is comprised of a plurality of article batch handling units arrayed radially in a circular formation and articles to be weighed are transported by a conveyor and dropped onto a centrally located dispersion feeder which distributes them among the individual article batch handling units. Each article batch handling unit includes a pool hopper for holding an article batch temporarily and a weigh hopper wherein the article batch is weighed by means of a load cell. An electrical signal indicative of the measured weight is transmitted therefrom to a computer which performs the aforementioned combinational calculation to select a combination of weights, or corresponding article batch handling units, and transmits discharge signals to the selected article batch handling units, thereby causing article batches to be discharged from these selected units.
In order to operate such a system, the user is generally required to set a number of parameters for a program written for the system computer which executes it. With the progress in relevant technologies, however, combinational weighing systems are becoming increasingly versatile and the number of data required for the operation is also increasing. The input procedure for these data becomes accordingly more complicated and troublesome. For this reason, there have been developed input-output devices and programs intended to enable even a relatively inexperienced user to efficiently make use of a great variety of functions offered by a given system. According to the input procedure disclosed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 772,244 filed Sept. 3, 1985 and now U.S. Pat. No. 4,694,920 and assigned to the present assignee, for example, the user can interactively select a program from a menu which appears on a display screen. For some of the programs on the menu, the user may not have to furnish a large amount of information. For running certain programs with a versatile modern system offering many choices, however, the user may be required to enter a large number of data to define the conditions under which the program is to run. In situations where it is desired to change the operating conditions of such a system with some frequency such as when many different kinds of articles are weighed out or when the same kind of articles are weighed out to different target values, the user's job to reset the operating conditions each time not only is complicated and troublesome but may also require the help of an experienced operator. Further, there is a greater risk of error and a decline of productivity when there is a large number of data to be entered.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,553,616 issued Nov. 19, 1985 to S. Haze and assigned to the present assignee discloses entering such operating conditions not singly but as a set of reserved values through a data input unit. Sets of reserved values are written into a memory means by a write control unit. When it is necessary to reset operating conditions, therefore, the user has only to read the desired conditions from the memory means, that is, as a set of reserved values.
With further advancement in the combinational weighing technology and by increasing demands from the users, the number of entries required of a user and displayed in the form, for example, of a menu has increased correspondingly. The aforementioned U.S. Pat. No. 4,694,920 describes a data input program according to which the first menu, displayed after power is switched on and a title display is briefly made, contains ten items, or programs, to choose from although some of these items are not accessible to unauthorized persons who do not know the predefined password. Of the ten programs accessible from the first menu, some are relatively straightforward such as one titled "Zero Adjustment" for effecting zero-point adjustment either on all weighing devices or only on a specified one of them, depending on how the user responds, or another titled "Productions" for starting a normal weighing process. There is also one titled "Prearrangement" which includes eleven sub-items according to one example, which are: (1) "Target Weight" for specifying a target weight value, (2) "Upper Limit" for defining an allowable range within which total combined weight values must fall, (3) "Feeder" for setting the vibration strength of the feeder for supplying articles to be weighed to the system, (4) "Dump Count" for setting the number of times articles are discharged from the weighers to make up the target value, (5) "Speed" for setting the number of batches discharged per minute by the system, (6) "Feed Multiplier" for setting a certain multiplier for determining the vibration mode of the article feeders, (7) "Stagger Delay" for selecting time delays with which various hoppers in each article batch handling unit are opened and closed, (8) "Level Weight" for setting the weight of articles on the dispersion feeder, (9) "Product Code" for identifying a code associated with the kind of articles being handled, (10) "Product Name" for identifying a product name, and (11) "Calculation Mode" for selecting one of available calculation modes. Similarly, the item titled "Adjustment" includes as many as fifteen sub-items and relates generally to setting any of the named sub-items. The items "Variant 1" and "Variant 2", which are for adjustments to be carried out only by a trained engineer, likewise include ten and five sub-items, respectively.
With so many items and sub-items to be considered, the user must set a great number of parameters to define an operating condition, each parameter representing one of the items or sub-items being considered. Since each parameter is generally allowed to take two or more values, the aforementioned input method by reservation numbers becomes impractical if there are too many parameters because the number of combinations of the reservation numbers increases geometrically with the number of parameters to be set, nor is it reasonable to require a large space in the memory device for storing all combinations of reservation numbers.
In view of the above, only the reservation numbers for combinations of parameters related to the sub-items in the "prearrangement" menu were stored in the memory device of a prior art system, necessitating the user to directly and singly set the other parameters related to the sub-items in the "Adjustment", "Variant 1" and "Variant 2" menus. As mentioned above, however, this means that the user must repeatedly reset these sub-items as changes are made in operating conditions. Moreover, the entire operation must be stopped in the case of prior art combinational weighing systems whenever an operating condition is changed, for example, to adjust the timing delay between the opening of hoppers in an article batch handling unit. In other words, the user of prior art systems could not make such adjustments while watching the operating conditions on a display means, and the system often had to be started and stopped many times to effect adjustments.